Abstract:
Rituals are social mechanisms that have the very important function of effecting
transitions in social and/or religious roles and status. Such transitions can be
both internal and external in nature. Rituals should be differentiated from
ceremonies. The latter function to confirm the roles and issues of status in the
institutions of family, politics, education, religion, and economics. Ritual is the
mechanism by which role and status are changed in a valid way in order to ensure
spiritual growth and strengthen the bond with the church. The purpose of the
article is to comment on the apparent loss of experiential meaning associated with
the ritual of baptism in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, but probably also in
most protestant churches that practice the ritual of infant baptism. The thesis is
that infant baptism functions like a ceremony rather than a ritual. The infant, not
present at its own baptism in any real sense except physically, is never able to
experience the affective and cognitive transition originally wrought by the ritual.
Therefore, if the church does not introduce some measure to effect the bonding,
the individual will always have trouble in identifying with the church.
